


Mon coeur se recommande a vous

by twistedchick



Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dunnett
Genre: Age of Sail, F/M, envoi, home at the end of journeying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-24
Updated: 2010-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-06 16:23:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedchick/pseuds/twistedchick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of an era, Kate finds a new beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mon coeur se recommande a vous

On the journey from the past to the future they rode side by side, last of the mourners behind the cortege that bore Marthe Crawford's body to Midculter. Archie Abernethy went first, driving the carriage that held her, with Richard riding beside him. Archie's mouth was set in as firm a line as anyone had ever seen, but his eyes were clear. Richard, in sober black, seemed thoughtful; he had been ignorant of this last half-sibling until the day she rode over the hill to her death.

Jerott, from whose eyes tears still leaked, rode alone behind the carriage. He had wept with Sybilla's and Kate's arms around him the night before, and then had downed as much straight whiskey as Kate was willing to give him. Despite the hangover he must have been feeling, his back was straight and his seat in the saddle was easy, but the others gave him the privacy of his thoughts.

Last among them rode Kate, watching that straight back, with Adam on his mount next to her.

"It feels like the end of an era," Kate said, her eyes on the back of Jerott's resolute shoulders. "All the chickens have come home to roost, for better or worse, and not a fox among them. What will you do now?"

"I haven't decided." Adam reined his horse around a hole in the road. "I am still part of the company of St. Mary's, but... It's hard to say what will become of us. Francis cannot go to France; he's embarrassed too many people there. Russia is still closed to him as well."

"He said he was retired. Maybe he is, this time." Kate brushed a stray insect away from her eyes. "Maybe." She thought of her daughter's face, the lines of worry gone, the light in her eyes and the tenderness in her smile as she moved with Francis's arm around her. It was as if she had been a painting before, two-dimensional, and had stepped out of the stillness of the frame when Francis appeared. Even if Kate had not felt warmly toward Francis in the past, this would have made her love him. All Francis's rough edges had been smoothed, and his presence felt warm and comforting where he had once been sharp-tongued as a dirk and prickly as gorse.

_As the pen needs the penknife, they are made for each other, and they know it._ So Adam had written to her, before Philippa came home so many months earlier. And so it was, now.

Kate hoped that, for once, a happy ending might be possible. At this point, she would have been pleased with a happy middle period, a stanza in the canticle of their lives. All of them deserved some peace, at least, after so many years of disruption and pain. How long had it been since she had first heard Francis Crawford play harpsichord in her music room? More than fifteen years. Only she had remained, through it all, the country mouse at Flaw Valleys.

Francis had lost one sister as a child, and now he had lost this sister as well. At least he and Richard had made their peace with one another's differences. Deny his needs as he would, or transfigure them into other forms, Francis could not escape the truth: he needed to be needed by the people who loved him. She had always seen that, in the creation of the St. Mary's military camp, in his voyages across Europe and the Mediterranean. He had never gone entirely alone, or without care for those on whom he depended.

Kate shook her head to clear it of the cobwebs of the past. She listened to the wind rustling in the clumped trees and the whisper of the gorse and, once they'd crossed the border, the heather. It was a comfort to have Adam only an arm's length away. He had become part of her life at Flaw Valleys, musician and artist and man of all trades that he was, while they waited for Philippa to emerge from her self-imposed hermitage.

As if only a moment had passed, instead of an hour, Kate continued, "But I wasn't asking about Francis. Would you return to Russia, Adam? They need maps, don't they?"

The scar on Adam's face seemed to stand out more strongly, red against his pale skin and dark hair. "They need much more than that, but there is no place for me." He turned to look at her, his horse calmly stepping through the heather by the side of the track. "I have had some thoughts, but I wanted to consult you first. This is not the time, though."

"It will wait." She frowned. "It seems as if all I've been doing these past years is waiting. Well, at least Philippa is home and she and Francis..."

"They may have a chance at happiness now, I think. I hope." He paused as if preparing to say more. "It will be a while anyway before he is well enough to think of work, I expect. This last imprisonment was meant to kill him."

"I don't like to ill-wish anyone, but I could hope that Margaret Lennox finds herself in as evil a prison as she inflicted on others." She lowered her voice so that Richard would not hear her.

Sybilla had stayed back at Flaw Valleys with Francis and Philippa; she would certainly send someone if there was need, but Kate knew there would be none. Francis had been treated cruelly and needed time and peace in which to recover; so had Philippa. If he went into the music room he would find the sheet music she had left there for him, new tunes and old songs, some of them duets. Maybe they would find time for the lute and harpsichord, eventually.

Again Kate's thoughts swept her away.

When they reached Midculter there was a slight contretemps between Richard and Jerott of which Kate caught only fragments, but by the time she had dismounted in the yard and had handed the reins to a stableman it had blown over. Of course it had to have been over religion, but at least this time Richard had seen sense: he acceded to Jerott's request and had sent a man to bring the priest for the funeral. Jerott had served for so long as a knight of the older religion that to have Marthe's last rites in the familiar phrases of Catholicism could only bring him comfort.

After the funeral Kate took Jerott's arm to lead him away from the bleak hole in the ground and the pile of damp earth and the smell of roses and heather in the flowers laid over the quickly hewn coffin. He looked back once, then straightened his shoulders and went with her into the house, to Richard's wife Marotta and her hospitality. In the morning, he told her, he would be riding back south to seek passage to Malta, to go back to war. He could not bear to return to Paris, where memories of Marthe would meet him around every corner. Kate nodded and listened, watching an ignored tear trickling down his cheek.

Long after the evening meal, when Kate was trying to remember her way from Midculter's drawing room to the bedroom she'd been given, she saw light in the library and followed it. Adam was sitting at a table, drawing something by the light of a branch of candles, a tankard of small beer at his side.

"Adam? Can't you sleep either?"

Adam looked up. "I wanted to get this done while I was thinking of it." He sat back from the table to let her see without the shadow of his arm blocking his work. "Do you think Philippa will like it?"

"What -- oh." Kate set her own candle lamp down and peered over Adam's shoulder at the map he had drawn of Britain and Europe and the Mediterranean and the lands south of that sea and the islands within it, and off to the right the westernmost area of Russia, all of it connected by lines. Two sets of lines, she noticed, in different colors, lines that crossed in some places and met in others. She traced them with her fingertip above the paper. How amazing it was to be able to show the tracks of those years in such a small space.

One for Philippa, following the long trail to find Kuzum, Francis's son, and then onward to London and France and back. One for Francis, from Scotland to England to France to Malta to Constantinople and Russia and through the narrow wild waters back to Scotland again and France, and now back to the Border where he'd begun.

"It's wonderful. I think she'll love it."

"I wanted a change from military maps." Adam's glance fell away from her face and he seemed ever so slightly hesitant, as he carefully moved the drawing aside and brought out another sheet of paper from underneath. "Sometimes I just want to draw for a while."

Kate's breath caught. Here was her own house at Flaw Valleys, the house that Gideon had brought her to as a bride, but instead of the unkempt area that threatened to go to bramble between the side door and the barn, closer to the house than to the stable-yard, lay a formal pattern of bushes and trees and paths, with a small open-air shelter at the center. This looked like a roof poised over delicate pointed arches, perfect for those midsummer days when she most wanted to sit outdoors in the shade for sewing or reading. Roses, sheltered by the house and barn, were here and there, along the winding pathways. The perennial herb garden would remain in place, with its ancient rosemary bush incorporated into a section of the border, while the annual plants would move into a new area nearer to the kitchen door.

"It's for you. Do you like it?" Adam asked, his dark eyes still on her face.

"It's wonderful." Kate's breath caught in her throat. Surely Philippa would be gone somewhere with Francis -- but where? The military encampment at St. Mary's was no place for her, and Midculter was no longer Francis's home. Perhaps they would stay, and give her grandchildren to play in the folly and chase kittens through the herbs and flowers.

She had not dared to think of that future, of a home filled again with music of voice and instrument, games and laughter, until she saw the sparkle in her daughter's eyes and the peace on Francis's face.

"If you would like it," Adam said, his voice soft, "I'd be pleased to build it for you." He put down the pen and reached out a hand to her.

And the focus of her mind's eye shifted to the empty space in her life since Gideon's death, to the pleasure of having Adam there each day to talk with and walk with and make music with, and to lie with in the soft bed upstairs that had been too large for so long.

She took his hand. "Yes. Yes, please, Adam."

**Author's Note:**

> Written for elishavah in the Yuletide 2007 challenge.


End file.
